3D Printers: Bambu Lab, Creality, and Black Friday 'Deals': What's Actually Worth Your Money?
Alright, let's be real. Black Friday's here, and the internet's screaming about 3D printer deals. "Up to 50% off!" they yell. "Print your dreams!" they scream. Give me a break. It's mostly just a bunch of plastic crap we don't need clogging up landfills.
The Allure of Instant Gratification (and Useless Trinkets)
I saw one article breathlessly talking about SUNLU silk PLA filament for Cinderwing dragons. Dragons? Seriously? Are we all suddenly medieval LARPers now? Don't get me wrong, 3D printing can be cool. I saw one person online who 3D-printed Joy-Con grips for their Nintendo Switch 2, and even a giant pokeball vase for their wedding centerpieces. Okay, maybe the pokeball is pushing it... But still.
But let's not pretend this isn't mostly about buying cheap printers to churn out mountains of plastic junk. Keychains, phone stands, those articulated dragons that everyone prints for five minutes before they break. I mean, another article mentioned 3D printing cosplay props – fine, if you're into that. But how many people actually finish those projects? How many half-printed Iron Man helmets are gathering dust in garages right now?
And the filament. Oh god, the filament. Mountains of colorful plastic spools promising endless possibilities. Except, most of it ends up as failed prints, support material, and eventually… garbage. We're drowning in plastic already, and Black Friday 3D printer deals are just throwing gasoline on the fire.
The Bambu Hype Train: Worth the Ticket?
Everyone's losing their minds over Bambu Lab. "Bambu is widely considered one of the better 3D printer brands on the market," one article says. And The Best Black Friday 3D Printer Deals Are at Best Buy, an Official Bambu Lab Reseller, which apparently is a big deal. Okay, cool. The Bambu Lab A1 Mini is apparently an "excellent entry level printer." Fine.
But are these printers really that revolutionary, or are we just caught up in the hype? Is it worth shelling out hundreds of dollars for a machine that might just become another dust collector in six months? I mean, I saw one article mentioning the X1 Carbon seemingly disappeared from Bambu's website... discontinued? What's the deal with that? Makes you wonder, doesn't it?
And the AMS (Automatic Material System). $350 for multi-filament printing? You can daisy chain up to four AMS to manage as many as 16 different filaments. Sixteen! Who needs sixteen different filaments? Are we printing the freakin' Sistine Chapel here? Or are we just printing more plastic dragons?
Someone also mentioned the Snapmaker U1, and how its SnapSwap system allows the printer to switch colors in just five seconds. Five seconds! As if that's the bottleneck in the 3D printing process.
A Future Made of Plastic?
The real kicker? The environmental cost. All this cheap plastic, all this wasted energy, all this… junk. We're celebrating "deals" on machines that are designed to pump out more plastic crap, and offcourse no one seems to give a damn about where it all ends up.
I saw a mention of a "SnapSwap system, allowing the printer to switch colours in just five seconds (wowza)." I wonder how many tons of microplastics are released during all this "wowza" printing.
And let's not even get started on the noise. The constant whirring and buzzing of these things. It's like living next to a swarm of robotic bees.
Then again, maybe I'm just being a grumpy old man. Maybe 3D printing is the future. Maybe we'll all be living in houses made of recycled plastic, printed on demand. Maybe… nah. Probably not.